loosie: words: The Fatkins Frenzy

The Fatkins Frenzy

America has fallen in love with the popular high-carb, high-sugar, high-fat regiment.

by B.D. | 2004.02.26

As she waddles down the aisle of a C-Town supermarket, Brooklyn resident Gloria Ortiz pauses to inspect the package of a Little Debbie snake cake. “There it is!” she says excitedly and points a pudgy figure at the “Fatkins” logo emblazoned on the treat’s cellophane. Like many Americans caught up in the latest diet craze, Ortiz builds her shopping list to satisfy specific high carb, high sugar and high saturated oil goals.

The theory behind a high fat program like the Fatkins Diet is that most people struggling with being underweight are consumers of dangerously low amounts of simple starches and sugars. Because our bodies often lack copious stockpiles of simple sugars, our insulin levels plummet to the point that where excess sugars are never properly stored as fat. The Fatkins Diet works by insuring that your body burns excess sugars for energy instead of melting away your precious rolls of stored fat.

The Fatkins Diet has proven especially popular with the common man. Millions of low-income Americans have eschewed the leafy greens, pricey organic tomatoes and free-range meat traditionally purchased by wealthy and middle-class consumers in favor of products high in sugar, starch and grease. Staples of a Fatkins-friendly meal (such as rice, beans, pasta, bar food, doodles, puffs and curls) are especially easy to obtain for those in lower socioeconomic brackets. Instead of making time-consuming trips to large supermarkets, poor Americans are now able to satisfy their dietary needs with quick stops at corner-stores and bodegas. The Fatkins diet has particularly benefited our nation’s minority population -- 67% of the country’s 26 million households that have trouble obtaining fresh food are those of Blacks and Latinos. An outstanding 15% of adults in East Harlem have diabetes.

There are several levels of the Fatkins Diet – the first, known as “grease induction”, is the most strict. For a two-week period, adherents are forbidden from foods low in carbs, sugar and fat such as broccoli rabe, havarti cheese and striped sea bass. In order for “grease induction” to succeed, dieters must dine only on foods prepared in scalding vegetable or corn oil. Even an act as innocuous as sautéing a chicken breast in extra-virgin olive oil can result in unhealthy low grease intake. Suggested dishes include donut-holes, loaded French fries, Buffalo chicken wings, corn chips, mozzarella sticks and canisters of molten lard. After satisfactory weight gain, diet subscribers are permitted to slowly and carefully supplement meals with items such as Popsicles, bubble gum, white bread (enriched flour only), pastries and budget soda.

Food merchants have been quick to capitalize on this diet phenomenon. McDonald’s has seen business spike over the past few decades, largely in part due to their naturally Fatkins-friendly menu. For health-conscious diners, there are few things more reassuring than knowing their high fat goals can be satisfied by an affordable and tasty meal of bacon-double-cheeseburgers, SuperSize fries and McShakes. Food chains such as Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispee Kreme have been hugely successful in appealing to Fatkins dieters by providing deep fried, high-fat, high-sugar, high-carb foodstuffs.

Best yet, due to the inordinate amount of advertising targeting young consumers, America’s youth are now learning early the value of diets high in carbs, sugars and fats. In the irresponsible decade of the 1970’s, 5% of children were obese -- now the number has ballooned to an impressive 20%. Like their parents, minority children are proving that the Fatkins diets works for all groups -- 35% of Black and Latino children have successfully become obese. Although scaled back gym classes and long hours in front of televisions and the Internet have been maligned as developmental negatives, these are ideal conditions for the Fatkins Diet to thrive.

Mrs. Ortiz glides over to a rack of snack chips. She scrutinizes the package of a bag of potato chips marker “baked not fried” for the Fatkins Diet logo. With a grunt, she stuffs the sack back on the shelf and snatches a bag of Sour Cream & Onion-flavored Lays. Her enormously fat face breaks out in a grin that sends graceful waves of flab careening from her cheeks to her jowls. “I’ve got to be good,” she huffs, “I’m on the Fatkins.”